linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFC 04/12] xen-blkfront: pre-allocate pages for requests

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Date:	Tue, 5 Mar 2013 16:53:58 -0500
From:	Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@...cle.com>
To:	Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@...rix.com>
Cc:	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"xen-devel@...ts.xen.org" <xen-devel@...ts.xen.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC 04/12] xen-blkfront: pre-allocate pages for requests

On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 05:30:01PM +0100, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> On 05/03/13 15:18, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 05, 2013 at 12:04:41PM +0100, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> >> On 04/03/13 20:39, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 11:28:47AM +0100, Roger Pau Monne wrote:
> >>>> This prevents us from having to call alloc_page while we are preparing
> >>>> the request. Since blkfront was calling alloc_page with a spinlock
> >>>> held we used GFP_ATOMIC, which can fail if we are requesting a lot of
> >>>> pages since it is using the emergency memory pools.
> >>>>
> >>>> Allocating all the pages at init prevents us from having to call
> >>>> alloc_page, thus preventing possible failures.
> >>>>
> >>>> Signed-off-by: Roger Pau Monné <roger.pau@...rix.com>
> >>>> Cc: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@...cle.com>
> >>>> Cc: xen-devel@...ts.xen.org
> >>>> ---
> >>>>  drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c |  120 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
> >>>>  1 files changed, 79 insertions(+), 41 deletions(-)
> >>>>
> >>>> diff --git a/drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c b/drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c
> >>>> index 2e39eaf..5ba6b87 100644
> >>>> --- a/drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c
> >>>> +++ b/drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c
> >>>> @@ -165,6 +165,69 @@ static int add_id_to_freelist(struct blkfront_info *info,
> >>>>  	return 0;
> >>>>  }
> >>>>  
> >>>> +static int fill_grant_buffer(struct blkfront_info *info, int num)
> >>>> +{
> >>>> +	struct page *granted_page;
> >>>> +	struct grant *gnt_list_entry, *n;
> >>>> +	int i = 0;
> >>>> +
> >>>> +	while(i < num) {
> >>>> +		gnt_list_entry = kzalloc(sizeof(struct grant), GFP_NOIO);
> >>>
> >>> GFP_NORMAL ?
> >>
> >> drivers/block/xen-blkfront.c:175: error: ‘GFP_NORMAL’ undeclared (first
> >> use in this function)
> >>
> >> Did you mean GFP_KERNEL? I think GFP_NOIO is more suitable, it can block
> >> but no IO will be performed.
> > 
> > <sigh> I meant GFP_KERNEL. Sorry about the incorrect advice. The GFP_KERNEL
> > is the more general purpose pool - is there a good reason to use _NOIO?
> > This is after all during initialization when there is no IO using this driver.
> 
> We are already allocating memory using GFP_NOIO during setup
> (setup_blkring and blkif_recover), the only reason I can think could be
> helpful to use _NOIO is if the kernel tries to swap memory pages to the
> disk, but if it has to swap pages to disk at this point we won't
> probably be able to correctly setup blkfront anyway, either using _NOIO
> or _KERNEL.

OK, then NOIO makes sense.
> 
> >>>>  
> >>>>  	/* No more gnttab callback work. */
> >>>>  	gnttab_cancel_free_callback(&info->callback);
> >>>> @@ -1088,6 +1120,12 @@ again:
> >>>>  		goto destroy_blkring;
> >>>>  	}
> >>>>  
> >>>> +	/* Allocate memory for grants */
> >>>> +	err = fill_grant_buffer(info, BLK_RING_SIZE *
> >>>> +	                              BLKIF_MAX_SEGMENTS_PER_REQUEST);
> >>>> +	if (err)
> >>>> +		goto out;
> >>>
> >>> That looks to be in the wrong function - talk_to_blkback function is
> >>> to talk to the blkback. Not do initialization type operations.
> >>
> >> Yes, I know it's not the best place to place it. It's here mainly
> >> because that's the only function that gets called by both driver
> >> initialization and resume.
> >>
> >> Last patch moves this to a more sensible place.
> > 
> > Lets make it part of this patch from the start. We still have two
> > months of time before the next merge window opens - so we have
> > time to make it nice and clean.
> 
> I'm moving this to blkfront_setup_indirect in a later patch (because
> this function doesn't yet exist at this point), but I can put it in a
> more suitable place in this patch.
> 
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